Medora: A Zombie Novel (15 page)

“Alright soldiers,” Ortega called out so all could hear, “there’s a little town seven miles from here called
Strykersville, population 676. It’s there we’re going to find the rest of the bird. Let’s move in two minutes.”

Ortega walked back to the Humvee with Dave trailing him, “Hey… Sir, uh, since when does the National Guard get issued flame throwers?”

“We’re not the National Guard, we’re Medora One. Now shut your mouth.”

Rambert was drowning in coffee. Opposite his desk was a framed poster on the wall of an American bald eagle with outstretched wings soaring through the air with a faint American flag flapping in the background. He always disliked the poster, wanting to decorate his office however the way he wanted but was afraid of whatever media grumbling there could possibly be about him not being patriotic enough.

At this
moment, he was at a rare moment in between phone calls. The presence of silence filled his ears and he decided just to wait in it for a few more moments before getting back to what had become the worst day of his life. Granted he realized that it was many people’s worst day but for many reasons everything in his career had pointed to today. Rubbing the wrinkles on his scalp, he wondered how far back this day had been set in motion. What wheels were already grinding? When did they start and who pulled the ripcord?

Back at Harvard, during his undergraduate years he should have listened t
o Jimmy. Rambert still remembered the exact moment when he received the best advice from anyone that he now realized he would ever receive. A warm glow came from summer street lamps lighting up Jimmy’s eye lashes as he sat on the warm concrete, crossed legged in flip-flops. “Larry, pal, the road you’re leading, you know on down to D.C., just please don’t become what you already hate.” Rambert knew what he hated back then as a young man in college. He hated his professors manipulating his students with intellectual elitism; he hated lobbyists inventing problems to draw media attention in order to convince constituents to threaten politicians. He hated millions of taxpayer money invested in doomed projects to boost popularity. He knew about all this things and what was chilling him the most in his office was how easy it is to fall into the political traps that a pseudointellectual undergrad can recognize decades before it happens. It’s all so obvious, he thought.

The phone rang and
Rambert momentarily stared at it before answering.

“
Rambert.”

“Mr. Secretary, the Secretary of Defense is dead.”

He cleared his throat to stall the reality of what he just heard, “how? When did he…?”

“New York.”

“When did he go there? This doesn’t make sense.”

“The White House at this time is not making the fact public and we ask that you contain this information and keep it in mind as the President makes a temporary appointment.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m sorry sir, but I have to go.”

“Yes, yes thank you for calling.”

The last time he had talked to the Secretary of Defense was three hours ago. The man talked a lot but actually said very little. That’s all
Rambert had been hearing the last 24 hours: everybody talking, planning, speculating, formulating and conjecturing yet no one actually doing a damn thing. The whole of Washington were hiding behind their words and their intellect but without taking any significant action. This virus has already killed them. It hadn’t infected their bodies but their minds had already been drained by the sheer awesomeness of the sickness. The swiftness and authority by which it was making itself known was quickly casting a shadow down on D.C. from New York. Rambert noticed that none of the women in the meetings was wearing high heels. He even dropped a pen under the table to check and he was certain, they were all in tennis shoes. You can’t run from the sick in pumps, he thought. Many of the Senators and Representatives had left scheduled congress meetings to be at their home state. Rambert wondered if it was less for the people of their hometowns and more for being away from the eastern seaboard.

The phone rang again, this time it was Stark. “Dr. Stark, I was just about to call, what can you tell me, my friend?”

“Mr. Secretary, I don’t have good news.” He let out a prolonged sigh.

“Please, Mr. Stark, be as concise and brief as possible.”

“Everything is wrong; it’s all wrong. This thing, whatever this thing is, isn’t behaving like anything I’ve ever been familiar with. To be honest, I’m not even sure what the pathogen is, I’m pretty sure it’s a virus but we are second guessing ourselves right and left down here.”

“And the
boy, Danny? What’s he been doing this whole time?”

“The kid is
fine, I’m looking at him right now taking a nap. I haven’t got a clue why he isn’t sick.

“Haven’t you tested his blood? Compared it the other infected Medora patient you have there, what have you called him, Kyle?”

“Yes, of course, we’ve done entire batteries of tests. We’ve got the best geneticists in the country trying to map out the DNA and determine what differences there are between the people that become symptomatic and those that don’t. I mean, there is some good news on that front. It seems that Danny might have a different type of protein expression on his white blood cells that differs from those that are infect. This may be one reason why he hasn’t gotten sick but it doesn’t get us close to finding a way to eradicate the virus from his body or anyone else’s body for that matter.”

“That sounds very promising, what is the problem?”

“The problem is that we have no idea what this virus is made of. We don’t know how to create a cure for a virus that we can’t detect.”

“What do you mean you can’t detect it, don’t you know that it’s there?

“Oh, it’s there alright but every normal test we have to detect what it’s made of comes up with nothing.”

“Then how do you know it’s even there?”

“Because, I had to run an electron microscope to actually look down on the molecular level to identify the damn thing. We’ve seen it; it has the shape and architecture of a virus. It’s in the blood of every person that gets bitten whether they’re sick or not like Danny. But when we try to see what it’s made of, it doesn’t show up on any scans. From what I can tell it’s not even made of protein. It’s like a ghost.”

“
Like the same ghost from England?”

“Maybe, I didn’t say that.”

“Dr. Stark, what exactly do you have to tell me? Because I’m getting nothing out of this conversation, sir.”

“This is exactly what I’m trying to tell you. I can look right at the virus under a microscope but I have no idea what it is, what it’s made of and where it came from.”

“Can you tell me anything about the transmission of the virus? How does it infect people?”

“
Just as I said before, it’s through open contact with blood or saliva. It actually is in the air in Danny’s room; his blankets, his skin, his blood and even in his organs. Fortunately for him it’s not doing anything, it’s just sitting there dormant. Now when we expose chimpanzees to the same air or skin cells as Danny, nothing happens. Nothing happens to rats either. I can find no evidence of virus in their bloodstream after air contact even though the virus is present in the air. A very different story happened when Dr. Beckfield threw a chimp into the room with our sick friend, Kyle. Kyle immediately attacked and bit the chimp. Within a matter of less than thirty seconds that chimp attempted to gnaw its own big toe off. It started exhibiting the same symptoms as Kyle. We exposed two other chimps to the infected one. They’re doing the same thing after being bit.”

“You’ve got infected chimps down there?”

“Yes just the three. The point is, from what I can tell, the only way to transmit the virus to the blood stream is through a rupture through the skin exposed to either saliva or blood and that almost everybody, minus Danny, die and become these… monsters. This is the most deadly virus I’ve ever seen, the most deadly known to man. This is how New York has crumbled in a day. Once someone is bit they turn very fast and they turn around and bite someone else. I estimate that a small town of a couple thousand people could be totally devastated by the virus in a matter of hours.”

“That unfortunately is no longer just a good guess but a total reality.”

“I’ve got to know, how far has this thing gone? What are the current boundaries of infection?”

“From what we can tell from police and military reports, the infection hasn’t spread beyond the suburbs of New York City but there has been a potential compromise in the North of the state.”

“How could it skip up there?”

Rambert
breathed deep, “A plane from LaGuardia crashed near a small town. It’s presumed to be from infected passengers.”

“Oh my sweet shit. Do you have containment up there? Mr. Secretary just one small town becoming infected could have disastrous consequences.”

“We are all fully aware here at the White House, we have a specially trained team that is taking care of the situation as we speak.” Rambert replied with optimism.

“I see. I’ve full trust with what you are all doing right now.” There was a pause in the conversation.
Rambert knew why Stark had said that. It needed to be said whether Stark really believed that or not. He felt like Stark was saying it more for his own benefit as if he needed to be reassured that the United States government still had authority. Rambert had felt the tense fear with all the conversations he had had that day from all the important and powerful people in the country. He had sensed the subtle malaise of feeble panic under the false garb of confident voices shouting out platitudes about the solidarity of the American People and their will to move forward.

“Thank you, Dr. Stark, and I have the same trust in you and Dr.
Beckfield and all the researchers right now across the country that are trying to figure this thing out.”

“On the subject of Dr.
Beckfield, how well do you know him?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m beginning to question his… competency to be frank.”

“How do you mean?”

“He’s always back talking to me, doing procedures much slower than normal, he doesn’t seem to grasp many concepts that I would fully expect him to understand. He’s under the impression that we can start vaccinating without fully understanding the virus. I mean you can’t vaccinate against a virus if you don’t know what it is. The guy has become like a broken record to me.”

“You know that’s just really surprising to me. Dr.
Beckfield is one of the nation’s leading infectious disease physicians not to mention he’s also a virologist. He has most recently spent several years in some sort of cancer research. I couldn’t see how he could possibly be causing a problem. The White House staff recommended him unanimously. He also has a personal relationship with the President. One person really couldn’t be recommended more than him.”

“That’s what I find so puzzling.”

“Dr. Stark I’d love to help resolve this issue right now but there are more pressing matters than the work relationship that you have with Dr. Beckfield.”

“Yes, I understand I just want you to be fully aware of the situation over here.”

“What’s next Dr. Stark?”

“We’re trying to isolate the protein responsible for Danny’s apparent immunity. I suggest you coordinate with the other facilities that are investigating other Medora survivors and have them do the same. That or try to identify what this virus really is by other than conventional means because we’re coming up with nothing. In fact if I could be allowed access to the researchers at the other facilities holding the survivors it would really help us out over here.”

“I’m going to be honest Dr. Stark. I don’t even know where they are being held or what is going on with them.”

“Why not?”

“It’s above my pay-grade. Intel on them is
deeply
classified; you should be lucky that you even know that they exist. The President is very tight lipped about them.”

“This doesn’t make any sense. We need collaboration here, Larry. You’re expecting me and the staff here to come up with miracles with our hands tied behind our backs.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it.”

Stark paused, “I’ll call you in like twelve hours.”

“Thanks.”

At the
lab, Stark slowly put the phone down on the wall receiver and looked over at Danny in his bed, behind glass, in his small quarantined room. There were a few finger paintings up on the wall inside his room and crayon drawings of a stick figure family. Nothing was making sense to Stark. He always figured that in end-of-the-world scenarios that the entire world would come together and collaborate in a heroic effort to solve the current crisis like in all those cheesy disaster movies. Now, he’s faced with an unknown, vicious, rapidly spreading disease and the red tape of Washington is stopping anything from happening.

He felt feverish, a chilled sweat was brooding on his forehead and his stomach had a sack of concrete sitting in it. What he really wanted to say to
Rambert was that he was wrong to call him in; to fly him out and give him a special lab to help save New York. There were hundreds of other researchers more qualified than he was to be doing this. Everyone expect Beckfield.

He peered at him across the room, looking through a microscope. His grey laden hair had grown out over his ears and glasses giving him a dopey appearance.

“Dr. Beckfield,” he called to him across the lab, “do you think it would be a good idea to start running more western blots on Danny’s white blood cells?”